SUNY Downstate Derails It's Own Plan to Lay Off 500 LICH Staff

The drunken-driver management of SUNY Downstate in Brooklyn swerved suddenly yesterday when it canceled its just-announced decision to lay off 500 nurses and other healthcare workers at Long Island College Hospital (LICH), the unfortunate Cobble Hill hospital SUNY took over two years ago.

The last-minute decision may have had something to do with LICH supporters' plan to march back to court and slap papers on individual SUNY board members.

Or, it may be just another part of SUNY's tactic of total LICH disruption, all the time. SUNY is still trying to crater LICH in spite of multiple court orders demanding they keep it open.

Or, it may be just another sign of the the lack of any decision-making process at SUNY. Does anybody know what's happening inside the money-losing bomb known as SUNY Downstate? Their tactics at LICH have cost the hospital $88 million since they took it over, according to their own statement. (Their figures have never been audited, however.) No one is even looking at what their mismanagement is costing SUNY Downstate itself.

SUNY is hallucinating that it can sell LICH, a crucial hospital located in an area with no other hospitals, and build itself a new, $1 billion hospital -- across the street from King's County hospital, which has said it has two empty floors.

Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, the NYS Nurses Association (NYSNA) and members of 1199 Healthcare Workers, part of the coalition working to save LICH (other members are Patients for LICH, Concerned Physicians of LICH, and six influential community groups) made the announcement at a rally outside LICH yesterday.

More here.




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